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The Flyers' game is trending in the right direction again but their odds of making the playoffs are still stacked against them. Eric Hartline / Imagn Images
VOORHEES, N.J. — The odds are still incredibly long. Even with the Philadelphia Flyers’ three-game winning streak — and a 4-1-2 mark in their last seven, bookended by the Olympic break — their chances of making the playoffs sat at just 14 percent prior to Tuesday’s action, according to our latest model.
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Such is reality after a club that looked primed to stay in the playoff race at the turn of the New Year took a nosedive in January.
Potentially complicating matters is the upcoming trade deadline. The Flyers could end up moving Rasmus Ristolainen, who has lately been playing on the top defense pair with Travis Sanheim, and has been particularly effective. If the high price of a first-round pick and a prospect that the Flyers are putting on Ristolainen is met before Friday at 3 p.m. ET, the 31-year-old is likely gone, which would leave a huge hole on the blue line that the club wouldn’t be able to immediately fill. It’s worth wondering whether the Flyers might address their future logjam at wing before the deadline, too, by subtracting a current contributor.
There’s more. There are a few important players now banged up, including Ristolainen, who didn’t take part in Tuesday’s practice. He and Christian Dvorak were given “maintenance days,” per Flyers coach Rick Tocchet, while leading scorer Travis Konecny, who missed Monday’s game in Toronto, and veteran defenseman Nick Seeler, who left the game in the second period, were also absent.
Tocchet said all four would be game-time decisions for Thursday’s home meeting with the Utah Mammoth. The Flyers have off Wednesday.
Regardless of how the lineup looks for their next game, though, the Flyers do have some momentum they’ll carry with them in an attempt to avenge what was a brutal defeat in Salt Lake City in January. Wins over the Rangers in New York (3-2 in overtime on Feb. 26, courtesy of a Matvei Michkov breakaway goal), Boston Bruins (3-1, at home on Sunday) and Toronto Maple Leafs (3-2 in a shootout on Monday, earning their first win in that building since 2019), have the Flyers still barely within striking distance of the playoffs with 22 games to go.
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Just as encouragingly from their perspective is that they have been playing a brand of hockey that made them one of the league’s early season pleasant surprises — low-event hockey, but with a strong defensive zone structure and penalty kill, and buoyed by the goaltending of Dan Vladar, who has been in net for the latter two wins (and who played well in their 3-1 loss in Washington last Wednesday in their first game coming out of the break, too).
A team that surrendered 4.67 goals-per game during that miserable 2-8-3 stretch to close out January has given up just eight in its last four games. Part of that is because Vladar has been stellar — and Sam Ersson was solid in the win over the Rangers, too — but they’ve also done a better job of preventing the sorts of back-door goals and seam passes to the weak side that were plaguing them before the break.
What’s changed?
“A big part of it is just energy,” said Cam York. “We want to be as aggressive as we can in the (defensive) zone. I think the time off just let us refresh a little bit, mentally and physically. That goes a long way being able to defend hard and close out time and space for the other guys.”
Captain Sean Couturier said: “I think we’re just harder to play against by being more aggressive, taking away time and space.”
That aggressiveness that York and Couturier mentioned is by design. Tocchet has attempted to simplify the Flyers’ defensive zone structure, even going so far as to move away a bit from the standard zone defense that he’s known for implementing in previous head-coaching stops.
The Flyers’ overall youth — they’re still the sixth-youngest team in the league — is one reason for the change in philosophy. The less some of the young players have to think about and process, the more effectively they can lock things down in their own zone, so the thinking goes.
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“We’re trying to make some guys have less decision-making,” Tocchet said. “If you can squash plays, you get less decision-making. But it’s hard to do, it’s hard to play that way. You have to continue to do it. To be a good hockey team, a consistent team, you’ve got to be able to go in there and consistently squash plays.
“We can’t be just all going crazy running around, but I have liked the pace of being more aggressive. That’s a mindset that we’re going to have to continue around here and going into next year, and follow it up. Keep getting that scar tissue of that concept, of getting in there and squashing a play.”
While their game is trending in the right direction again, the Flyers are going to try and do something Thursday that they haven’t done in more than two years — win their fourth in a row. The last time that happened was Feb. 6-12, 2024. The Flyers won three straight games just twice this season before their current run.
If they’re going to make this thing at all interesting, they have no time to lose. That sort of urgency should, in theory, prevent them from letting fatigue become too much of a factor during what is still a condensed schedule, according to York.
“This is a smaller stretch of hockey, which I think can be a good thing, because you can really empty the tank,” York said. “Guys know what to do with their bodies, and we’ve all been pros for a while now. Taking care of your body is obviously important. The (22) game stretch I think is good for all of us.”
When York’s comments were relayed to Tocchet, he was encouraged.
“I love that he’s saying empty the tank,” the coach said. “Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Because of our January, we’ve put ourselves in a little bit of a behind spot. We don’t have a lot of runway or room for error. But in saying that, we can’t play tight. You’ve got to just play the game. But I do like the empty-the-tank attitude.”
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Kevin Kurz is a staff writer for The Athletic NHL based in Philadelphia. He previously covered the New York Islanders and the San Jose Sharks for 10+ years and worked in the Philadelphia Flyers organization. Follow Kevin on Twitter @KKurzNHL
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